In Japan’s Earthquake Altered the Length of a Day they manage to jam together into one little article not only Japan’s earthquake and Noah’s Flood, but also the length of a day, the radius of the earth, and the existence of tectonic plates. We can’t really summarize or critique this one in a brief post, so we’ll give you some excerpts, with bold font added by us, and then you can click over there to figure it out for yourself. They begin by saying:

Japan’s disastrous March 11 earthquake has had a lasting geologic impact on the earth. Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology preliminarily found that it moved the planet’s rotation axis by 25 centimeters.

ICR’s source for that is something they read in the Huffington Post. But after that dramatic opening, their next paragraph says:

The earth movements caused a slight contraction in the overall circumference of the planet, which has shortened the length of each day by about a millionth of a second.

Okay. A huge earthquake caused a minute shortening of the length of a day. Remember that as we read on:

Historian and author Bill Cooper showed how the length of each day was such that exactly 360 days comprised a year — the earth’s single revolution around the sun in the pre-Flood world. He used information from portions of Genesis chapters 7 and 8 to calculate a year consisting of 12 months of 30 days each.

It’s not important who that guy is, or how he arrived at his conclusion. We know that in our own time a year is a bit more than 5 days longer than that. Assuming the earth’s orbit hasn’t changed, that means our days must have shortened rather considerably in order to fit 365 of them into a year that was only 360 days long just a few thousand years ago. That would require a lot of massive earthquakes! ICR is aware of the problem, as can be seen here:

The effects of Japan’s earthquake were relatively miniscule [sic], subtracting only a tiny fraction of a second’s worth of day/night rotations during a single year. So, altering the earth’s day/year synchronization by five days would take an almost unimaginably powerful earth-altering event. And yet, there is geological evidence that just such a fantastic catastrophe occurred.

ICR’s “evidence” is the biblical Flood, plus the existence of tectonic plates. We shall ignore the dubious persuasiveness of their scriptural evidence, and their peculiar assumption that tectonic plates are the the result of earthquakes rather than the cause, and press on with their article.

Next they have a couple of paragraphs that say this, with reassuring footnotes to an ICR article and a creationism conference:

Research geophysicist John Baumgartner wrote in 2004, “Many lines of evidence show that today’s igneous ocean floor — all of it — has formed via seafloor spreading since roughly mid-way through the Flood.” The earth’s crust looks as though it has recently suffered a complete overhaul.

In this scenario, the equatorial radius of the pre-Flood earth would have been 30 miles longer than today’s radius, assuming earth’s mass distribution is the same now as it was then. This represents about a 3.5 percent decrease in earth’s equatorial circumference, perhaps caused by runaway subduction associated with the Flood, causing earth to spin on its axis more than five days faster.

Never mind the earth’s radius. Let’s just pause for a moment to see where we are in all of this. According to ICR, a year (presumably unchanged) used to be 360 days because the earth used to spin slower — thus a day was longer. Okay, we’ve done some math. 360 divided by 365.25 = .985626, which means (we think) that a day today is roughly 1.5% shorter than ICR claims it was in Noah’s time. That’s no big deal, or is it?

How many seconds are there in 1.5% of a day? A day is 86,400 seconds. One point five percent of that is 1,296 seconds. That’s how much ICR claims a day has shortened since Noah’s Flood about 4,000 years ago. By contrast (or confirmation, according to ICR) the Japan earthquake shortened the day by only one millionth of one second. Okay, it’s all very clear now. Here’s how the article ends:

The testimony of Scripture is that at the start of the year-long global Flood “the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up.” [Footnote to Genesis.] This indicates that subterranean material was violently thrust to the earth’s surface, having torn through the crust, leading to a profound redistribution of the planet’s mass. Historical evidence from Scripture and geological evidence from the earth indicate that it was indeed possible for the rigors of the Flood to have significantly altered the number of days in a year.

So there you are, dear reader. As you can see from the fact that Japan’s earthquake shortened the day by a millionth of a second, the biblical account of the Flood is true.

14 responses to “ICR: The Flood Added 5 Days to the Year”

The circumference of the Earth is ~24,901.55 miles, and 3.5% of that is ~871.6 miles …

Uncle … A little BOTE math reveals that I have completely forgotten how to calculate moment of inertia for a rotating sphere – I was going to work out the corresponding reduction in the Earth’s radius, because it seems it might be considerable.

They say “runaway subduction associated with the Flood, causing earth to spin on its axis more than five days faster.” in their article. Of course, they make broad, sweeping claims about the rates of subduction without having the slightest iota of understanding of the mechanism whatsoever. You don’t get to make “empty space” in the real world of geology, so any material subducted is compensated for by the upwelling mantle at spreading centers. And of course they offer no hypothesis for exactly HOW flood waters would have affected subduction zones, which are all under kilometers worth of sea water in the first place. Do people really believe this garbage, SC? I find it very depressing.

I was going to work out the corresponding reduction in the Earth’s radius, because it seems it might be considerable.

No need. My very simple math was enough to show that while Japan’s earthquake — one of the largest on record — shortened the day by a millionth of a second, Noah’s Flood shortened it by over a thousand seconds. So the Flood had a billion times greater effect than the Japan earthquake. Lemme see … that would have registered 69 on the Curmudgeon scale.

Research geophysicist John Baumgartner’s work was completely discredited by a research geophysicist named John Baumgartner.

What?

Yep, Baumgartner used a geophysical modeling program to move the continents at high speed and the thermodynamics melted the planet. He also stated that he had no mechanism, either, to account for the movement. He made his proposal and discredited it in one swell foop.

I like the way you think. The biggest problem with almost every creationist model of geologic history is the heat problem. Runaway subduction melts the earth. Changes in radioactive decay melt the earth. Evaporation of the flood waters (often used to explain the ice ages) burns off the atmosphere, including Noah and kin (just b/c it might cool the ground, the heat still has to go somewhere). Even if they could prove that the Earth contracted 30 miles very rapidly as they say, that releases even more heat.

No wonder we’ve got global warming problems with all this hot air the creationists are releasing.

Re-reading this in the morning with a cup of coffee in my hand, I am even more amazed at the level of insanity involved.

We can directly measure the slowing of the earth’s rotation. Our measurements are corroborated by using the directly measured rate to calculate the exact times of ancient recorded eclipses, and the calculated times agree. The correlation extends into fossil growth records as well (I read one paper comparing Devonian coral growth marks, and corroborating those marks with the ~22 hour day, ~400 day per year extant at that time) – but such “millions of years” evidence is unnecessary to prove the point.

The ICR author completely ignores all the current “operational science” evidence that ICR normally considers acceptable, and instead postulates that the earth’s rotation has become faster than it was in the past. Completely the reverse of what we know to be true. The basis for this wild assertion is, of course, just another fictional back-story conjured up to support the flood epic.

I am confused as to why this is necessary in the first place? Why is a 360 day year preferable to a 365 day year from a religious viewpoint? Is it more perfect to have an evenly divisible number of days in a year? If that’s true, what else should the pre-flood world have been like? Should the earth also have been a perfect sphere? Should the moon have orbited in a circular orbit exactly 12 times per year? If so, I look forward to reading the back-story for moving the moon to it’s current, non-perfect 28 day elliptical orbit during the flood, and the distortion of the earth’s perfect roundness.

So if the increase in rotational velocity is proportional to the change in inertia, this works out to the radius of the Earth shrinking by about 27 miles (in some sort of average sense). You might think that an event of such proportions a mere 6000 year ago would leave unequivocal evidence.

The cited article by Bill Cooper (a historian and author, or so says the ICR website!) argues that because the current lunar and solar calendars don’t line up nicely, they have to be the result of the Flood. I figured that God at least grad-e-ated the sixth grade, but apparently He’s incapable of doing more advanced arithmetic.

The cited article by Bill Cooper (a historian and author, or so says the ICR website!) argues that because the current lunar and solar calendars don’t line up nicely, they have to be the result of the Flood.

Yes. And before the Flood, Celsius and Fahrenheit thermometers always gave the same temperature readings.

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